Wool Being Pulled Over the Eyes of Grass Roots Republicans-Part 3

Recent­ly, I wrote three Sub­stack arti­cles alleg­ing the fact that grass-roots Repub­li­cans are “hav­ing the wool pulled over their eyes” by the Geor­gia Repub­li­can Par­ty “Cor­po­ra­tion,” star­ring CEO, Josh McK­oon and a select sup­port­ing cast of ques­tion­able actors. 

The first two cen­ter around the man­ner in which the Geor­gia Repub­li­can Par­ty “cor­po­ra­tion” has used what I term a “sleight-of-hand,” designed to USURP and CONCENTRATE pow­er belong­ing to a rel­a­tive­ly large group of “grass-roots” Repub­li­cans, known as the “State Com­mit­tee” under GRP, Inc. rules, and place that author­i­ty into the hands of a small, much more cen­tral­ized group of “exec­u­tive” Repub­li­cans, known under those same rules as the, “State Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee.” And appar­ent­ly, that “trick” (yes, I call it a “trick” because it is appar­ent­ly an ongo­ing, inten­tion­al decep­tion), has been uti­lized to sup­press the voice of grass-roots Repub­li­cans for many years inside the Repub­li­can Party. 

But now we see the prestidigitator’s mag­ic and how it is used to con­cen­trate pow­er at the state par­ty lev­el. We also see the same decep­tion employed to allow small num­bers of “exec­u­tives” to con­trol the “par­ty” at coun­ty lev­els (I use quo­ta­tion marks around the term, “par­ty,” because it’s real­ly not a polit­i­cal par­ty at all, but a cor­po­ra­tion mas­querad­ing as a polit­i­cal party). 

How the Magician Performs the Illusion

The ploy is to con­vince a rel­a­tive­ly large group of unsus­pect­ing Repub­li­can faith­ful, at state and local lev­els respec­tive­ly, to believe that the process of for­mu­lat­ing, adopt­ing and pro­mul­gat­ing major pol­i­cy ini­tia­tives and actions should right­ful­ly fall under the author­i­ty of a small group of exec­u­tives, where­as, unbe­knownst to the faith­ful, the large group of grass-roots Repub­li­cans, of which they are mem­bers, is actu­al­ly enti­tled to con­trol those activ­i­ties BY LAW. The impor­tance is that, in a repub­li­can form of gov­ern­ment, the larg­er the num­ber of indi­vid­u­als who affect gov­ern­men­tal pol­i­cy, the more accu­rate­ly that pol­i­cy will reflect the true will of the peo­ple. Con­verse­ly, the small­er the num­ber of indi­vid­u­als who affect gov­ern­men­tal pol­i­cy, the more accu­rate­ly that pol­i­cy will reflect the true will of select­ed spe­cial inter­ests. The trick to which I refer is so sim­ple that I am amazed so few, includ­ing myself, ever saw it before. 

Fig. 1 (below) depicts the Geor­gia law empow­er­ing the “for­mu­la­tion, adop­tion and pro­mul­gat­ing of polit­i­cal par­ty rules and reg­u­la­tions.” Notice the ref­er­ences to “state exec­u­tive com­mit­tee” or “coun­ty exec­u­tive com­mit­tee.” Those terms are not cap­i­tal­ized in the law. That is because they are not prop­er names of com­mit­tees in the law. They are sim­ply descrip­tions of what those com­mit­tees do. The “state exec­u­tive com­mit­tee” is that com­mit­tee empow­ered under law to “exer­cise state-wide juris­dic­tion,” and to “for­mu­late, adopt and pro­mul­gate rules and regulations…governing the con­duct of con­ven­tions and oth­er par­ty affairs.” That com­mit­tee must exist in the par­ty struc­ture, or the orga­ni­za­tion can­not be con­sid­ered a law­ful “polit­i­cal par­ty.” No oth­er polit­i­cal par­ty com­mit­tee is empow­ered by Geor­gia law to per­form the activ­i­ties asso­ci­at­ed with these pur­pos­es. Anal­o­gous­ly, the com­mit­tee referred in law as the “coun­ty exec­u­tive com­mit­tee” is that com­mit­tee, empow­ered to per­form those same oper­a­tions, rel­a­tive to the “state exec­u­tive com­mit­tee,” only at the coun­ty lev­el. For the sake of sim­plic­i­ty, although the same dis­cus­sion per­tains to both lev­els of polit­i­cal par­ty oper­a­tions, for my pur­pos­es today I will con­fine the dis­cus­sion pure­ly to the state level. 

Giv­en all that I just showed you, let me ask you a ques­tion. What if the exist­ing state Repub­li­can Par­ty rules essen­tial­ly bor­rowed the term, “state exec­u­tive com­mit­tee,” from the law, and appro­pri­at­ed that term to NAME a cer­tain SUBCOMMITTEE, one com­prised of a rel­a­tive­ly small num­ber of exec­u­tive mem­bers? What if no one noticed that the term in ques­tion, “state exec­u­tive com­mit­tee,” which is intend­ed to DESCRIBE a cer­tain LARGE, statewide com­mit­tee empow­ered under law, were bor­rowed and used as the NAME for a rel­a­tive­ly SMALL sub­com­mit­tee, one with no intend­ed law­ful pow­er to “exe­cute” the oper­a­tions of the LARGE com­mit­tee from which the name were taken? 

If that might occur, know­ing human nature as we do, we might expect that indi­vid­u­als com­pris­ing the ref­er­enced SMALL sub­com­mit­tee might find them­selves tempt­ed to “for­mu­late” cer­tain poli­cies law­ful­ly reserved for the LARGE com­mit­tee, would we not? Now, real­ize, if what I describe were not at least a reg­u­lar occur­rence in pol­i­tics, USURP would not be a word. The cir­cum­stance I just described is the very one Geor­gia Repub­li­cans are wit­ness­ing in their state Repub­li­can Par­ty. A sub­com­mit­tee NAMED, “State Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee,” using cap­i­tal let­ters, is appar­ent­ly oper­at­ing under the USURPED author­i­ty of the law­ful­ly empow­ered “state exec­u­tive com­mit­tee” under Title 21. 

To bet­ter see this, I devised the dia­gram you see in Fig. 2 

In the left-hand col­umn, Fig. 2 illus­trates the com­mit­tee struc­ture at the state lev­el, law­ful­ly-empow­ered under Title 21, com­pared to the true and cor­rect respec­tive com­mit­tee NAMES of those com­mit­tees under Geor­gia Repub­li­can Par­ty Cor­po­ra­tion Rules in the cen­ter. Under those rules, the “State Com­mit­tee” is that com­mit­tee to which the law refers as “state exec­u­tive com­mit­tee.” The “state exec­u­tive com­mit­tee” has statewide juris­dic­tion, as well as all author­i­ty to “for­mu­late, adopt and pro­mul­gate rules and regulations…governing the con­duct of con­ven­tions and oth­er par­ty affairs.”

Now, com­pare Fig. 2 to the fol­low­ing dia­gram in Fig. 3, demon­strat­ing a dif­fer­ent, “invert­ed” rela­tion­ship involv­ing the “state exec­u­tive com­mit­tee” in law, which after a cal­cu­lat­ed “switcheroo” leaves it cor­re­spond­ing not to the “State Com­mit­tee,” but instead to the “State Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee” in the rules. 

Because the NAME of the small “State Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee,” in the rules, is the same as the DESCRIPTION of the large “state exec­u­tive com­mit­tee” in the law (State Com­mit­tee in the rules), the sim­i­lar­i­ty in the NAME of the one against the DESCRIPTION of the oth­er cre­ates the impres­sion that the “State Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee” pos­sess­es pow­ers it does not law­ful­ly possess. 

So, why am I spend­ing my week­end to tell you all this? Why is this important? 

Aside from the fact that it is rainy and cold out­side, one rea­son I’m telling you this is to show you how the Geor­gia Repub­li­can Par­ty “State Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee” recent­ly usurped the author­i­ty of its par­ent “State Com­mit­tee” in a recent noti­fi­ca­tion to prospec­tive Repub­li­can Pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates seek­ing to place their names on the 2024 Repub­li­can Pres­i­den­tial Pref­er­ence Pri­ma­ry bal­lot com­ing up in the Spring. You 

will see in the noti­fi­ca­tion in Fig. 4 that Josh McK­oon, pur­port­ing in this instance to be the Chair­man of the Repub­li­can Par­ty (as opposed to the CEO of the Geor­gia Repub­li­can Par­ty Cor­po­ra­tion), rep­re­sents that he speaks for the “State Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee of the Geor­gia Repub­li­can Par­ty pur­suant to Sec­tion 21–2‑193 of the Offi­cial Code of Geor­gia.” McK­oon also rep­re­sents to the read­er that the State Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee has the author­i­ty to for­mu­late, adopt and pro­mul­gate the rules he presents by which that same com­mit­tee will decide which prospec­tive pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates will appear on the bal­lot in the Spring. Appar­ent­ly, how­ev­er, McK­oon has no author­i­ty to do either. McK­oon has no appar­ent author­i­ty to rep­re­sent the State Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee in this noti­fi­ca­tion because, as I have con­firmed with oth­ers, he called no offi­cial meet­ing to dis­cuss and vote on pro­mul­gat­ing such a notice, much less on for­mu­lat­ing or adopt­ing its poli­cies for that pur­pose. Fur­ther­more, even if he had brought togeth­er a meet­ing of the State Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee for that pur­pose, that com­mit­tee is not empow­ered to for­mu­late, adopt and pro­mul­gate the poli­cies of this noti­fi­ca­tion in any event. The author­i­ty for that task resides sole­ly with the “state exec­u­tive com­mit­tee” in law, which goes by the name of “State Com­mit­tee” in the “par­ty rules.” (Once again, I am forced to place “par­ty rules” in quo­ta­tion marks because, appar­ent­ly, there are no true “par­ty rules” in exis­tence, only cor­po­rate rules.) 

Now, I pre­vi­ous­ly called these usurpa­tions of author­i­ty to your atten­tion in two of the three Sub­stacks I cit­ed at the out­set. My pur­pose in call­ing them to your atten­tion again today is to val­i­date every­thing I have writ­ten pre­vi­ous­ly, and do so in light of an expert par­lia­men­tary opin­ion writ­ten in answer to these ques­tions by the esteemed pro­fes­sion­al par­lia­men­tar­i­an, Kir­by Glad, whose cre­den­tials I present below. Mr. Glad lives in Utah, and is there­fore immune to polit­i­cal pres­sures from any­one involved in the Geor­gia Repub­li­can Par­ty, or per­haps even myself. In oth­er words, Mr. Glad, whose bio and cre­den­tials are below, is a dis­in­ter­est­ed, unbi­ased expert. I com­mis­sioned Mr. Glad’s work, but had no involve­ment in writ­ing any part of his opinion. 

I hired Mr. Glad to ask him two basic, par­lia­men­tary ques­tions. Ref­er­enc­ing the following: 

(1) the laws autho­riz­ing polit­i­cal par­ties in Title 21,

(2) the pub­lished rules of the Geor­gia Repub­li­can Par­ty, and

(3) Chair­man McKoon’s noti­fi­ca­tion to prospec­tive Repub­li­can Pres­i­den­tial Can­di­dates (Fig. 4 above), 

I asked Mr. Glad: 

1.      Whether the “State Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee of the Geor­gia Repub­li­can Par­ty,” ref­er­enced in Chair­man McKoon’s noti­fi­ca­tion, which is a com­mit­tee described in the linked rules doc­u­ment, is the same or a dif­fer­ent enti­ty than the “state exec­u­tive com­mit­tee” as that term is defined and used under OCGA 21–2, and, 

2.      Whether the “State Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee” in GRP, Inc. rules has author­i­ty to set qual­i­fi­ca­tions for can­di­dates to be list­ed on the bal­lot in the pres­i­den­tial pref­er­ence pri­ma­ry referred in Chair­man McKoon’s noti­fi­ca­tion, includ­ing the require­ment for prospec­tive can­di­dates to make a par­ty dona­tion in light of OCGA 21–2‑198.

I dis­cuss below sev­er­al pas­sages from Mr. Glad’s opin­ion. Here is the first: 

Thus, accord­ing to Mr. Glad, using nation­al­ly-rec­og­nized par­lia­men­tary best prac­tices, in his noti­fi­ca­tion to pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates, Chair­man McK­oon incor­rect­ly quotes OCGA 21–2‑193, which as we will see will turn out to be a mate­r­i­al error. 

Next:

As I have stat­ed numer­ous times and ways, when the law uses cer­tain words to com­prise a pure­ly DESCRIPTIVE term, when those words are CAPITALIZED as they are in the par­ty rules, they become a NAME of a com­mit­tee, a non­equiv­a­lent to the DESCRIPTIVE term in the law. 

Next:

Accord­ing to Mr. Glad’s expert opin­ion, the State Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee ref­er­enced by Chair­man McK­oon in his noti­fi­ca­tion has no inher­ent, law­ful author­i­ty to enact rules and reg­u­la­tions. That func­tion, as we will see, is reserved for the “State Committee.” 

That is because… 

…and…

So, let’s under­stand some­thing that is very impor­tant here. Accord­ing to Kir­by Glad, an indus­try-rec­og­nized and cer­ti­fied par­lia­men­tary expert, in pro­mul­gat­ing this noti­fi­ca­tion, not only did Chair­man McK­oon lack the statu­to­ry author­i­ty he claimed to pos­sess, but the State Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee which McK­oon pur­ports to rep­re­sent is not even the com­mit­tee ref­er­enced in the autho­riz­ing statute! Do you see the magician’s trick here? Do you see how cer­tain indi­vid­u­als have usurped author­i­ty from a gov­ern­ing com­mit­tee and appro­pri­at­ed it for their own use? 

Let’s keep going: 

Mr. Glad is telling us that, as a pure­ly “exec­u­tive com­mit­tee,” Chair­man McKoon’s State Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee can only exe­cute poli­cies as defined and assigned by the gov­ern­ing, “State Com­mit­tee.” The State Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee has no author­i­ty in law to for­mu­late mate­r­i­al par­ty poli­cies, much less adopt and pro­mul­gate those poli­cies. Did the “State Com­mit­tee” for­mu­late the rules gov­ern­ing the pol­i­cy by which Chair­man McKoon’s State Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee would deter­mine bal­lot access in the 2024 pres­i­den­tial pref­er­ence pri­ma­ry? Accord­ing to sev­er­al State Com­mit­tee mem­bers, no such meet­ing to dis­cuss this noti­fi­ca­tion was ever called, in fact, not for 2024, not for 2020, in fact, nev­er to their knowl­edge. The pro­ce­dure to which I refer is, as they say, “the way it’s always been done.” Do you see how “Boss Hog” all this is? It must stop. The mem­bers of the Repub­li­can State Com­mit­tee must take back their law­ful author­i­ty. That the peo­ple do not assert author­i­ty over their gov­ern­ing insti­tu­tions is exact­ly why Amer­i­ca is on the brink of destruction. 

Here, Mr. Glad makes it clear that the State Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee pos­sess­es no author­i­ty to devise the poli­cies pro­mul­gat­ed in Chair­man McKoon’s noti­fi­ca­tion, only car­ry out poli­cies autho­rized by the much larg­er and statewide, State Committee. 

Thus, the author­i­ty for Chair­man McKoon’s noti­fi­ca­tion above (Fig. 4) belongs sole­ly to the larg­er State Com­mit­tee, not the small­er State Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee. With­out the State Com­mit­tee act­ing to devise these poli­cies, or some­how del­e­gat­ing that author­i­ty to the State Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee, accord­ing to Mr. Glad, in craft­ing the pres­i­den­tial bal­lot access noti­fi­ca­tion Chair­man McK­oon could only have used per­son­al author­i­ty, which would be insuf­fi­cient to the task. 

Regard­ing to the “vol­un­tary” qual­i­fy­ing fee of $25,000, ref­er­enc­ing the con­trol­ling statute in Geor­gia law, 21–2‑198, Mr. Glad makes it clear: 

Here is OCGA 21–2‑193:

I have pre­vi­ous­ly dis­cussed the pre­sump­tion that a “vol­un­tary con­tri­bu­tion” would be unlaw­ful to solic­it from prospec­tive pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates under 21–2‑198. The fol­low­ing is how Mr. Glad dealt with this ques­tion­ably-law­ful­ly policy: 

Final­ly, Mr. Glad sum­ma­rizes his opin­ion in the fol­low­ing blan­ket finding: 

Thus, accord­ing to the learned, expert par­lia­men­tary opin­ion of Mr. Kir­by Glad, and quite pos­si­bly any opin­ion rea­soned by a pru­dent and unbi­ased observ­er, it appears that the poli­cies for­mu­lat­ed, adopt­ed and pro­mul­gat­ed in Chair­man McKoon’s Octo­ber 27 NOTICE TO CANDIDATES FOR PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, bear no sub­stan­tive author­i­ty what­so­ev­er, and result sole­ly from the usurpa­tion of law­ful author­i­ty resid­ing sole­ly under the purview of the Geor­gia Repub­li­can Par­ty “State Committee.” 

Now, do I believe the mem­bers of the State Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee will abuse the pow­er usurped from its gov­ern­ing com­mit­tee as it delib­er­ates lat­er today (Sun­day, Novem­ber 12, 2023) over the names to appear on the bal­lot in the Spring pres­i­den­tial pref­er­ence pri­ma­ry? Well, not in any way that I would find over­ly con­cern­ing. Frankly, any attempt by com­mit­tee mem­bers to, for exam­ple, keep the name of Don­ald Trump off of the Geor­gia bal­lot, would be tan­ta­mount to slit­ting their polit­i­cal wrists in the minds of grass-roots Repub­li­cans. So, that is not like­ly to happen. 

As the Repub­li­can State Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee pre­pares to meet this after­noon, I raise this issue to point out yet anoth­er mate­r­i­al breach by the elect­ed Geor­gia Repub­li­can Par­ty lead­er­ship respect­ing the laws under which par­ty oper­a­tions are estab­lished and reg­u­lat­ed. Because the laws of Title 21 are not option­al, but manda­to­ry, as par­ty lead­er­ship pro­ceeds on a path toward a nation­al elec­tion, its poli­cies in con­duct­ing elec­tion oper­a­tions advanc­ing out­side of the law’s require­ments, win or lose, any and all can­di­dates whose names appear on those bal­lots stand a chance of encoun­ter­ing jus­ti­fied elec­tion con­tests, which they could eas­i­ly lose. It has crossed my mind that the sce­nario I depict is so egre­gious, that los­ing these elec­tions might even be someone’s plan. 

The “Repub­li­can Par­ty” under Title 21 of Geor­gia law is not even pub­licly reg­is­tered with the Geor­gia Sec­re­tary of State. The Geor­gia Repub­li­can Par­ty “cor­po­ra­tion” is reg­is­tered under Title 14, the laws reg­u­lat­ing cor­po­ra­tions, rather than Title 21, the laws reg­u­lat­ing elec­tions. The rules under which the Geor­gia Repub­li­can “par­ty” oper­ates are cor­po­rate rules under Title 14, not par­ty rules under Title 21. Under Title 14, cor­po­ra­tions are extend­ed no right to bal­lot access.

So, here we see a con­clave of cor­po­rate offi­cers meet­ing to decide which names should appear on a statewide bal­lot over which they appar­ent­ly have no law­ful con­trol. If you were a com­pet­ing can­di­date against any Repub­li­can in 2024, and you under­stood you lost to an unlaw­ful can­di­date under Geor­gia law, would you not con­test your loss in court? That is the risk of all this con­tin­u­ing on its present course. Yes, odds are great that Don­ald Trump will have his name on the Spring pri­ma­ry bal­lot, placed there by the State Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee. But odds are also great that any vic­to­ry he, or per­haps oth­er Repub­li­cans might expe­ri­ence run­ning for office under taint­ed aus­pices, could eas­i­ly be over­turned in court. Do you doubt me? 

Many thanks to Mr. Kir­by Glad, expert par­lia­men­tar­i­an, whose full opin­ion follows.